


Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

by sburbanite



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Book Omens Week 2020 (Good Omens), Crowley has a sad wank in the bookshop and is nowhere near as stealthy as he thinks he is, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:21:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22642525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sburbanite/pseuds/sburbanite
Summary: Crowley knows he shouldn't be getting himself off on Aziraphale's sofa while the angel is upstairs reading. But the wine in his veins is singing its siren song and his corporation is definitely listening.(For Book Omens week)
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 52
Kudos: 275





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My attempt at book omens means +50% anxiety for Crowley and +200% bastard for Aziraphale.

Deep down, in the part of Crowley's brain that still had some semblance of sobriety, he knew this was a bad idea. There was no excuse for the way the wine made his self control fray at the edges and sent all the blood in his corporation downwards in a single pulsing wave. It was the wine that caused this reaction, obviously. The wine and nothing else. Never mind that it didn't happen when Crowley drank alone, watching his enormous television in his shiny, pristine flat. Never mind the fact that catching the scent of books and dust and ancient chintz led to inconvenient stirrings in his trousers in these post-apocalyptic days. In particular, he was careful not to mind the way Aziraphale chewed his pencil as he did the crossword, humming tunelessly in a manner that should drive Crowley up the wall.

It did drive him mad, sort of. But Crowley had known Aziraphale long enough that even his irritating little quirks had been coated with layers of fondness, turning them to pearls of affection nestled deep in Crowley's chest. It had taken years for the two of them to become truly comfortable just spending time with one another after the world spectacularly failed to end, but after almost four decades of looking over their collective shoulders they had reached a point where Aziraphale no longer shooed Crowley out of the shop when he began drowsing. Now he was allowed to stay, to stretch out on the lumpy, overstuffed sofa and snooze until Aziraphale woke him up, always too early in the morning, as he clattered about making tea. It was a privilege, being allowed in Aziraphale's space like this. A privilege that he was most definitely abusing.

The problem was, he mused drunkenly, that hanging around the angel made him painfully aroused, whether he chose to wear genitals or not. Going without kept him from being caught, but that meant he had no means of release whenever Aziraphale absent-mindedly patted his hand or topped up his glass of wine or let him slump up against him as his intoxicated spine slowly forgot how to be vertical. Being around Aziraphale had always felt nice, in a soothing, companionable, no-need-to-worry-Aziraphale-will-know-what-to-do sort of way. Lately, though, after his work assignments dried up permanently and his anxiety levels had slowly begun to lower, Crowley had started noticing things about the angel that had somehow managed to pass him by for thousands of years.

For instance, Aziraphale had a collection of different bow ties, all in the same tartan pattern. They looked almost identical so Crowley could find no rhyme or reason for his decision to continually swap them around. He also wore braces, honest to God grandfather-style elastic braces underneath his unfashionable, bobbly sweater-vests. The braces were also tartan. Crowley had caught a glimpse of them one day in 2003 when the angel reached up to re-shelve a valuable first edition and had found himself wondering whether he could unfasten them with his teeth. It had come as something of a shock.

Crowley was in love with a daft, round, devious bastard of an angel who dressed as if it was still the 1950s. Worse still, old corduroys and argyle jumpers apparently got his motor purring sweetly enough to make the Bentley jealous. It was ridiculous. It was overwhelming.

Above all, It was embarrassing as all Hell. 

Overcome by the absurdity of his situation, Crowley rolled over and stuffed his face into a cushion. Unbelievably, that only made the situation in his trousers worse.

The problem was that the whole place smelled like Aziraphale, felt like Aziraphale, was saturated in Aziraphale's aura of fussy protectiveness to the point that it was like being in a pocket of one of the angel's ancient cardigans. And thoughts like that led to dangerous places, to wondering what it would be like to be so close to Aziraphale's skin, to his flesh, to his heart...

While Crowley's mind was spiraling lazily through arousal and shame, his hand had a very clear destination in mind. It found its way to his belt buckle entirely without permission, snapped it open and then snaked itself into his obnoxiously expensive underwear.

And _oh_ , that was so much better.

He still felt too hot, too big for his clothes or possibly for his skin (although, owing to the way Crowley created his wardrobe fresh from the aether each morning, the two things were more similar than you might think), but wrapping his long, talented fingers around the length of himself definitely helped. Crowley let slip a mortifying whimper of relief, remembered where he was, and froze. 

Aziraphale was upstairs, probably nose-deep in a book, but he had the hearing of a Chinese fruit bat. Breath held, Crowley waited, motionless with one hand on his cock. There was no movement from upstairs, no shadows moving in the gentle glow filtering down the shop's rickety wooden staircase. Aside from the spiders working tirelessly between the shelves to keep moths (and customers) at bay, the quiet darkness of the shop remained undisturbed. If Crowley listened closely, below the scuttling sounds of arachnids and gentle shooshing sound of traffic passing outside, he could hear the sound of pages turning upstairs, of the angel breathing fitfully whenever he remembered he should. 

He was safe. 

Or as safe as one could be when illicitly masturbating on their best friend's sofa. Crowley pushed the guilt of that thought away and began to stroke himself: quickly, sharply, trying to bring himself off as fast as possible. As usual, though, it didn't work. Ironically, he could get away with it at home, in his own bed, where there was no pressure and he could take as long as he liked. Here, drunk and surrounded by Aziraphale, it just didn't work. Aziraphale wouldn't want it quick, wouldn't want a dirty little fuck that was over almost before it began. Crowley had never seen Aziraphale rush anything. He could put away a fine vintage with the best of them, but he savoured each and every sip. No. If he ever chose to have sex, the angel who kept a notepad with him when he read so that he could take copious notes would want to _luxuriate_ in it. 

At the thought of Aziraphale biting his lip, squirming under Crowley's hands as he gave him every ounce of pleasure he deserved, Crowley whimpered again: a high, desperate little sound he'd never admit to if he lived another six thousand years. In that moment, though, as his hand slowed to a less punishing rhythm, he couldn't even bring himself to care. 

Pretending that it was Aziraphale's hand on his cock should've felt wrong. Later, when Crowley sobered up, it absolutely would. But imagining his best friend looking up at him through long eyelashes, pupils blown wide with lust as he ran his perfectly manicured hand over Crowley's heated skin was almost enough to make him forget that it would never, ever be real. In six thousand years, Aziraphale had never done more than raise a quizzical eyebrow at the sexual exploits of the human race. They'd crossed paths at a Roman orgy wild enough to make a whore blush, and Aziraphale had exclusively had eyes for the buffet table.

The Aziraphale in his imagination was only interested in putting one thing in his mouth. Crowley hissed into the cushions as he pictured sinking his hands into that halo of golden curls and gasping out the praise the angel richly deserved. Aziraphale had always been an expert at dancing the line between piety and blasphemy and, oh, wouldn't bending in supplication to worship a demon be the ultimate test of his moral gymnastics? That clever mouth wrapped around him, tasting him, teasing and dragging things out until Crowley was almost sobbing. And he would, the bastard, he'd want to watch Crowley shake himself to pieces under the sheer force of Aziraphale's love.

Because that was the answer, obviously. The only way his selfish desire for the angel wouldn't be the death of them both. If Aziraphale returned even a fraction of the burning, twisted love that Crowley had nurtured for thousands of years - that had been ground into him like rich earth with each passing century, from companionship to friendship to utter, slavish devotion - then maybe he wouldn't end up alone for the rest of eternity. So many of his best dreams had begun like the images flashing through his brain, Aziraphale naked and wanting and looking at him with those eyes that saw into the core of him without even trying. But then everything would tip and shift, and Aziraphale would leave, disgusted, or be dragged down into the darkness where Crowley couldn't follow.

There were tears soaking into the couch cushions, although Crowley was too far gone to pay them any mind. He could almost pass off a quick wank on Aziraphale's sofa as proper demonic mischief, but drunkenly crying about it was edging into tragic territory. So instead of acknowledging the tightness in his chest, Crowley tightened his grip. As he moved, bringing himself closer and closer to the precipice, his inner fantasy fractured into dozens of shining moments. Aziraphale mouthing delicately at his nipple, burying his face into Crowley's neck, moving inside him, thrusting deep and hard with eyes shut tight with ecstasy. Aziraphale kissing him tenderly, stroking his hair with infinite gentleness. Making him feel safe and loved and wanted. 

Crowley came with a sob and gasp, face pressed so deep into Aziraphale's sofa every breath was filled with the scent of angel. Fire down his spine, blinding light behind his eyelids and blissful release of all the tension in his aching muscles. It was good, so good that for a moment Crowley forgot where he was and just let himself ride the wave of endorphins that carried him away to a soft, neutral place where he didn't have to think anymore. For a brief, immeasurable amount of time, he just let himself exist. 

And then came the fall back to earth, and the creeping shame that spread outward from the stickiness in his hand and penetrated deep into his soul. Even for a demon, this was fucking low. He couldn't keep doing this. He banished the mess in his underwear with a flick of his wrist. If only getting rid of the guilt was that easy. With a deep sigh, Crowley rolled onto his back and stared blankly at the cobwebbed ceiling. After the pleasure faded, all that was left was an ache between his ribs that wouldn't seem to shift. Heartache, maybe, if Crowley had a functional human heart to call his own.

He stretched out, limbs loose with the graceless lethargy of the afterglow, and tried to get comfortable. It would be a long night if he spent it beating himself up, and a waste of a decent orgasm besides. He should have closed his eyes then. Should have let sleep take him instead of taking one last, longing glance up at the half-lit staircase. If he'd done that, he probably wouldn't have noticed the fresh cup of tea that Aziraphale had left for him on the ancient backroom coffee table.

Crowley didn't need the heat senses he'd once possessed as a snake to know it was still hot, because it hadn't been there ten minutes ago. 

It hadn't been there before Crowley had gotten himself off to the thought of fucking his best friend.

His best friend, who had apparently passed by during the act and kindly left him a nice cuppa for when he finished his wank.

It took everything Crowley had not to scream. 

Instead, he sobered up, curled into a ball of shame and wondered what the fuck he was supposed to do now. Talk to Aziraphale, probably? Try to explain that what he thought he saw was, well, exactly what he thought he saw, because outright lying to the angel was frustratingly difficult. Apologize, definitely. Loudly. Emphatically.

Take the inevitable banishment back to his flat after every evening they spent together with the grace Aziraphale deserved. If there _were_ any more evenings. Or he could head it off, leave before the angel could send him away, find a dark corner and sleep until the world seemed brighter. The old Crowley would've been back at his flat by now, buried under the blankets and dreaming shameful, hopeful dreams where Aziraphale wasn't completely repulsed by him.

But something had changed, ever since he'd stood shaking on the tarmac with nothing but a tire iron between him and the wrath of Satan. Reluctantly, Crowley had begun to accept that running away didn't usually solve anything. Sure, it took you far away from where the problem was, but the actual problem tended to get worse.

Sleeping for a few decades would hardly be fair to Aziraphale, not now that they only had each other. Heaven and Hell had both forgotten they existed, and the angel sent the humans who dared to set foot in his bookshop running in terror on a regular basis. The other humans they knew were all middle-aged adults, with children or grandchildren or overly energetic dogs of their own. None of them would have time to listen attentively while Aziraphale complained about the inaccuracies in Paradise Lost for the hundredth time, or take him to the theatre when the Mousetrap had a particularly good cast. Nobody would take him to the Ritz every Tuesday and use a little demonic trickery to make sure they were only ever served wine from the owner's private cellar.

No, after all they'd been through, Aziraphale deserved to enjoy his retirement. Crowley knew, deep down, that that meant spending it together. They only had each other. And now Crowley had gone and made it weird. 

He hissed under his breath and pressed the heels of his hands hard against his closed eyes.

There would have to be a _talk_.

It was going to be awful.

But maybe at the end of it, Aziraphale wouldn't hate him. 

As he rose unsteadily and began to climb the stairs, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the light, Crowley hoped with every fibre of his being that he hadn't completely fucked up the only relationship in his life that had ever really mattered.

If he had, it was going to be a very long eternity.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be two chapters but it seems like it wants to be three...so enjoy!
> 
> Edit: I edited this almost immediately after posting so do re-check the ending of you read it straight away!

Crowley had never actually been in the flat above the bookshop before. It had always been there, as far as he knew, since human architecture tended to frown on staircases that led to nowhere. Before the averted apocalypse, those stairs had merely been extra bookshelves, groaning under the weight of the volumes Aziraphale _really_ didn't want the customers getting their grubby fingers on. They'd all been cleared away by the time Crowley had calmed down enough to casually drop by with a bottle of wine. A few times since then the angel had disappeared up there in search of a particularly good vintage, rattling and bumping about as he rearranged unseen piles of books. Because _of course_ it was filled with books, Crowley reasoned, probably to the point that the Collier brothers would have found it claustrophobic. It had to be. You could barely see the floor in the main shop, and the walls had been a lost cause for over a century. Upstairs, where Aziraphale didn't even have to make a token effort to admit customers into his space, was bound to be worse. 

So it was a surprise when Crowley reached the summit of the stairs and found it _tidy_ . There was a narrow hallway with a wooden floor, and nary a book in sight. There _was_ quite a bit of dust, because this was still Aziraphale's space, after all. Although the angel had many senses, human and ethereal alike, the ability to notice dust building up over time apparently wasn't one of them. Instead of the bookshelves Crowley had expected, the walls were lined with mismatched photographs, paintings, and the odd metallic flash of a daguerreotype. Most were landscapes -- places that Crowley recognised and a few he didn't. A few were of humans: people Aziraphale must have known, he supposed. One, right in the centre of the wall, was a sketch some toe-rag of a street artist had done of Crowley, capturing the soft smile on his face as he ate dinner with Aziraphale. Crowley carefully ignored it. Under better circumstances, he might have allowed himself to wonder what had possessed the angel to track the boy down after Crowley told him, both in the colourful local idiom of the time and in no uncertain terms, to fuck off. 

It wasn't even a particularly _good_ sketch.

Right now, though, he had some explaining to do. Probably a fair bit of apologizing, too. Light was spilling into the hallway from a narrow doorway at the end, painting the worn floorboards with gold. It was the angel's inner sanctum within his cocoon of ancient paper, and he absolutely didn't deserve to be anywhere near it. And yet, the door was open. Aziraphale could've shut him out, could've thrown him out of the shop altogether, but instead he was being invited tacitly upstairs to face the music. And what horrible music it would be. Probably, Crowley thought miserably, some sort of jazz.

The suspicion that he was in deep, deep trouble was confirmed when Aziraphale didn't even look up from his book as Crowley sidled awkwardly into the room. The angel was sitting in a shapeless armchair with a pattern too faded to make out in the low light provided by the single lamp, which, to Crowley's horror and disgust, had a tartan shade with a fringe on it. In one hand he held a copy of a book of American prophecies from the late twentieth century (a gift from Crowley, who had picked it up at the author's book-signing on an otherwise disastrous work trip to Las Vegas), in the other, a cup of Earl Grey tea. 

Crowley stood in the doorway and tried to think of something to say. After thirty seconds of complete silence -- aside from the soft sound of pages turning -- he gave up and resolved to wait quietly for the angel to pass judgement.

"Well," said Aziraphale, after what felt like centuries, "that didn't take you long to finish."

Crowley felt all of the blood in his body promptly take a vacation to somewhere less embarrassing. 

"I'm sorry?" 

"The tea, dear boy. Mine is still piping hot."

Aziraphale looked at him over the top of his thoroughly unnecessary spectacles, then blew across the top of his teacup for emphasis.

"Oh. Right. Yeah. The tea."

The angel sighed.

"Don't tell me you didn't drink it? And just left it downstairs? Really, Crowley, you'd forget your head if it wasn't screwed on."

The angel made to get up out of his chair, but Crowley waved him back down. 

"Angel. Forget about the blessed tea."

"There's no call to be ungrateful. It was Chamomile, not that it mattered, " Aziraphale sniffed, taking a long sip. "I suppose you'd better sit down then, hadn't you?"

There was another chair in the room, Crowley realised, crowded in close to the little side table by heavy wooden bookcases. Instead of a matching armchair, it was black leather Eames easy chair that looked as though it had never been sat in. The rectangular gaps in the light covering of dust on the seat suggested that until very recently it had been serving an additional, slightly wobbly bookcase. It was the sort of chair Crowley might have owned, if he'd ever really let himself get comfortable. 

And it _was_ comfortable, almost _sinfully_ so. As Crowley let himself sink into it, he wished he could truly relax in the way his spine was begging him to. But no, he still had to explain exactly why he'd been compromising the virtue of another piece of Aziraphale's furniture. Which was going to be difficult when Crowley felt like he was about to discorporate from embarrassment. 

"You know, my dear," said Aziraphale, startling Crowley from the self-loathing trance he'd briefly slipped into. "You don't have to sleep here, if you don't want to. Just because I...because we like to put away a few bottles now and then, there's no need to make yourself uncomfortable."

Crowley frowned. This conversation wasn't going the way he expected it to go. Nobody was shouting at him, or worse, being _disappointed_ in him.

"What are you on about?" He asked. "When have I ever complained about the bloody sofa?"

"I don't think you've ever set foot in my shop _without_ complaining about the sofa. Loudly, and at length."

"Well, yeah. It's awful. It's practically one huge lump and the pattern's so ugly it should be illegal. How old is it, anyway? I know you're immortal, angel, but soft furnishings definitely aren't-" 

Crowley paused mid-rant as he remembered the point he was trying to make.

"-but I don't mind sleeping on it. It's fine. Never been a problem."

Aziraphale looked away, eyes downcast at the liquid in his cup. 

"You weren't, though. Sleeping, I mean."

Crowley felt his face begin to redden as Aziraphale leaned gently on the crux of things. 

"No," he managed.

The silence stretched out as Crowley tried to think of something to fill it with that wasn't 'I was wanking into your cushions because I'm hopelessly in love with you.'

"I'm given to understand," the angel supplied carefully, "that humans sometimes do...that...when they're having trouble dropping off. I've heard it can be quite soporific. Relaxes a busy mind wonderfully."

"You've heard? From whom? Who've you been discussing the finer points of masturbation with?" asked Crowley, incredulously. The mental image of Aziraphale chatting to some human or other about the benefits of a nice orgasm before bed was utterly bizarre.

"From _books_ , Crowley, for Heaven's sake! Humans write about all sorts of things."

"Oh, right."

The angel was blushing now: a dusting of pink across the tops of his cheeks and the tips of his ears. Crowley forced himself not to stare.

"That's...not why," he said, forcing himself not to take the easy out Aziraphale had set up for him. It might as well all come out now. No sense in dancing around it for another few decades. And besides, Aziraphale was looking at him expectantly, openly, asking silently for the truth. 

Crowley took a breath, and then let it all out.

"Look, right, this is going to sound weird, and it probably is, but just bear with me, will you? Remember after the whole failed Armageddon? How strung out we were waiting for someone to contact us?"

"I do. I thought your neck was going to be stuck at a funny angle after all the time you spent looking over your shoulder."

Unconsciously, Crowley began rubbing at the spot on his neck where he'd had a persistent ache for most of the nineties. 

"Yeah. Couldn't relax, all I could think was that they were going to remember what we'd done and then it'd be curtains. No more dinners, no more trips to the park. No more getting gloriously pissed and crashing on your awful bloody sofa."

"We would have lost everything," said Aziraphale, softly, "were it not for Adam's kindness."

Ten years. It had been ten years of jumping at shadows and switching off TVs and radios so frantically that buttons shattered and knobs broke off in his hand. Aziraphale's ancient, hulking wireless had weathered the blitz without a scratch but had suffered at least a dozen indignities at the hands of demon paranoia. By the time the tenth anniversary of the failed apocalypse had come and gone, marked quietly by dinner at their usual table at the Ritz, it had begun to fade to a low, background hum. Never completely gone, but no longer tugging on his nerves like an amateur puppeteer. 

Crowley felt a distant echo of that old anxiety when Aziraphale leaned across the little table and put his hand on Crowley's, heedless of where it had been earlier that evening. Trying to soften the blow, he supposed. Make the coming disgust a little easier to bear.

"Go on, my dear," said Aziraphale.

"Right. So once all that was over, or as over as it got, then I was just sort of...lost, I guess. It was pretty clear nobody was waiting for reports anymore, so I just stopped, y'know?"

"I remember," Aziraphale nodded, smiling faintly in the gloom. "That was about the time you got the Allotment, if I recall correctly."

The Allotment had acquired a capital letter shortly after Crowley had entered into a bitter war of attrition with the Vauxhall Allotment Board.

"Look, I didn't have to play fair and let them kick me out, angel. If I wasn't trying to lay low they'd all be fertilizer right now."

"Very magnanimous of you."

"A demon should be allowed to yell whatever the heaven he likes at his own bloody plants. It was jealousy, I'm telling you, just because my marrows were the biggest."

"Of course."

"And to accuse me of cheating! Me, angel! All I ever did was provide a bit of _encouragement_."

Aziraphale patted his hand sympathetically.

"In their defence, there isn't really a non-supernatural explanation for a marrow the size of a Mini Cooper, Crowley."

"Well, I hope it made an unholy mess after they gave me the boot," said Crowley, staring grumpily into the middle distance. "Would've loved to see that bastard Perkins try to move half a ton of rotting marrow without occult intervention."

"To be frank, my dear, I'm not sure anyone knows what to do with marrows under normal circumstances. I don't think I've ever actually eaten one."

"They're just overgrown courgettes, angel. I _planted_ courgettes. Not my fault they're easily intimidated."

There had been quite a few new hobbies beside the Allotment, as Crowley tried desperately to find some way to shed some of the nervous energy he'd previously expended in service of Hell. Six months of experimentation with synthesizers had resulted in music that had tested even an angel's ability to be polite. Another year had been spent spray-painting stylised snakes onto increasingly inaccessible parts of London architecture. There had been a brief foray into app development (which Crowley had almost immediately decided was too evil, even for his tastes), and an altogether more successful one into molecular gastronomy. It had all been fun, and ultimately it had helped. Crowley was his own demon, after all, and if he wanted to spend several days distilling a few molecules of pure umami from some ludicrously expensive mushrooms just to make Aziraphale smile, he bloody well could.

"You were saying you felt a bit lost, my dear," Aziraphale reminded him, "before we got distracted."

"Oh, yeah. Er. Well, see, the thing is, I sort of stopped. Feeling lost. A little while ago."

"Well, that's a good thing, isn't it? Only you don't look terribly pleased about it."

Crowley found that he'd drawn his knees up subconsciously, readying himself for the inevitable, horrible end of this line of questioning.

"That's 'cause you're not going to like it, angel."

There was a strange sort of look on Aziraphale's face as he quietly put his teacup down and turned to face Crowley fully across the vast, yawning inches of space between them. 

"Why don't you let me decide," he said, taking Crowley's hand and squeezing it tight.

Crowley looked into the angel's big, blue eyes -- the same eyes he'd known for six thousand years but had never looked at him quite like this before -- and put all of his meagre supply of courage into a single, shaking sentence.

"See, the thing is, I found out I'm hopelessly in love with you. Always have been, really. Sorry about that."

Aziraphale let out a breath Crowley hadn't known the angel was holding.

"Oh, thank God," he said, smiling, "I was beginning to think you were never going to realise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive my lack of proper m-dashes, I'm writing on Google docs and I can't figure out how to do them. I could paste them from somewhere but who has the time?


	3. Chapter 3

Crowley blinked. 

"What?" He said, stupidly.

Aziraphale had the decency to look a tiny bit guilty, even if it was mostly buried underneath the satisfied expression of an angel who'd just been proven right.

"You _knew_?" continued Crowley, once he'd recovered slightly.

"Oh, yes. I can sense love, my dear. Had you forgotten? I've been getting little hints of it for about a thousand years, but ever since the business with the antichrist it's been...well, almost overwhelming."

A thousand years. That was as long as their Arrangement had stood, slowly separating the pair of them from their respective sides by a few more inches with each passing year. It had been business, at least to begin with. An excuse to do less and sleep more, with the delicious bonus of getting sloshed with Aziraphale every now and then. He supposed, with the benefit of hindsight, that it wasn't normal for a demon to take quite so much pleasure in observing the little pink patches that appeared on his work-enemy-turned-best-friend's cheeks when he'd had too much ale. Or to argue quite so passionately over the best cheese that had ever existed, or whether other long-lived creatures experienced time the same way they did (Aziraphale insisted that trees, even really old ones, weren't much more aware than the wood they would eventually become, Crowley wasn't so sure). People who weren't head over heels in love didn't usually find tuneless humming or compulsive pen-chewing or intractable pedantry to be heart-stoppingly endearing.

He'd loved Aziraphale for hundreds, if not thousands of years. It had happened without him even noticing.

"Are you quite alright, Crowley?" said Aziraphale, interrupting Crowley's unintentional stint of staring, dumbfounded, into the middle distance. 

"Er."

"Only you haven't said anything for quite a long time-"

Aziraphale squeezed his hand again, this time with a considerable amount of anxiety.

"-and you _did_ just say that you'd realised you'd _always_ been in love with me, so this really shouldn't be new information."

"Might've exaggerated a bit," managed Crowley, through a throat that seemed a lot narrower than usual. "Sounded more romantic in my head."

Aziraphale shifted out of his chair, moved to kneel in front of Crowley instead. A soft hand cupped his cheek, lifting his face so that he had no choice but to look his angel in the eye.

"Oh, Crowley. You daft thing."

"S'not my fault, is it?" Crowley sniffed, silently willing the moisture gathering in his eyes to fuck off. "Demons aren't exactly encouraged to examine our feelings, are we? You start flipping those rocks over and all you find are horrible wriggly things with too many legs. Most of 'em want to sting you to death."

Aziraphale nodded sympathetically. He supposed the angel had been in a similar situation, albeit for different reasons. There might not be skeletons in Aziraphale's closet but there were a lot more doubtful moths than there should have been, nibbling little holes in his angelic certainties. Over the millennia they'd turned heaven's canvas of lies into a fragile lacework that went up in smoke along with his bookshop. 

Nonetheless, Aziraphale had been poking about in emotional crannies that Crowley hadn't even known existed, and he hadn't thought to share what he'd found.

"If you've known...that...for a thousand years," said Crowley, "why didn't you bloody _tell me_?"

The hand on Crowley's cheek stilled, retreated, taking a little piece of his heart with it. It was all going wrong, because of course it was.

"It seemed like something you should probably figure out on your own, dear boy," the angel said, softly. "And I...I had to think about some things. It didn't really seem like my place-"

"-No, yeah. Right. Course. I get it."

Dealing with a demon's unwanted affections for a solid millennium couldn't have been much fun. And now Aziraphale was frowning sadly at him, so that was just bloody brilliant.

"No, Crowley, that's not...oh, for crying out loud."

And then Aziraphale was leaning forward, pressing soft lips firmly against his, letting desperate little puffs of air out against Crowley's cheek. The hand was back, pulling him in close, cradling the back of his neck like he was something precious, something breakable. It was warm and human and perfect. Crowley sighed against him, letting the angel smooth away the hard edges of his soul.

When it was over, he noticed with a funny little lurching sensation that Aziraphale was running his thumb along one of Crowley's razor-sharp cheekbones. 

"I love you too, you know." said Aziraphale, clearing his throat awkwardly. "I realised I hadn't said."

Crowley made an unintelligible noise in the back of his throat. Talking seemed to be beyond him at the moment, sitting as he was in Aziraphale's flat with the angel himself kneeling before him and kissing him and saying that he _loved_ him. And that didn't seem like something that could be true, of course, because Crowley wasn't much more than a collection of jagged edges in an equally sharp suit, but then the angel had _kissed him_. So that rather threw a spanner into the engine of that whole self-loathing train of thought.

Aziraphale, the utter bastard, seemed to find the whole thing immensely amusing. 

"Since when?" managed Crowley, after a few more strangled attempts. 

"I couldn't possibly comment," said Aziraphale, smiling mischievously. "But a very long time indeed."

"A long time, eh?"

"Oh, definitely. Ages. Centuries, even."

Crowley sucked in a breath and held it.

"Sorry it took you catching me, y'know, _at it._ I mean, objectively I'm not sorry, s'good demonic behaviour, defiling the furniture and all that."

Aziraphale sighed fondly and patted Crowley's cheek. 

"Well, after the third time caught you, ah, making a mess of yourself, I thought something had better be done." 

For the second time in one extraordinary evening Crowley found himself making thoroughly embarrassing noises in the back of his throat. It hardly seemed fair. 

"I knew it, I bloody knew it!" he said, jabbing the angel in the centre of his chest with one spindly finger. "You've never made a cup of tea quietly in six thousand years. You don't do anything quietly! It's all clattering and humming and singing to yourself. _Essspecially_ when I'm trying to sleep!"

"I don't know what you're implying-"

"-Yes you do. Have you been ssspying, angel?"

The blush colouring Aziraphale's cheeks and the way he suddenly refused to make eye contact was an answer in and of itself.

"I hardly think it's spying to just exist in my own bookshop, Crowley. It's not as though I can't feel all the love in the air when you're…"

"Wanking?" supplied Crowley, helpfully. He was grinning, almost ear to ear, not that the angel seemed to have noticed.

"I was _going_ to say 'pleasuring yourself', although I think that might sound worse, now that I come to think of it."

The turn of phrase gave Crowley, quite unbidden, a very intense mental image of Aziraphale doing just that. It must’ve shown on his face, because the angel suddenly looked unbearably smug.

"So the tea was what? Bait?" asked Crowley, because Aziraphale wasn’t quite off the hook yet. "An invitation to come upstairs and explain myself?"

"Something like that. And you're quite welcome to come upstairs anytime you like, dear boy."

And, oh God, the double entendre was _intentional_ that time. Aziraphale might as well have nudged him and winked, and for some godforsaken reason that was incredibly attractive. But there was also the invitation into Aziraphale’s space, the implication that he was welcome in this book-lined haven that the angel had made for himself. 

“Really? You sure, angel?”

“Crowley, do you really think I bought a _black leather_ Eames chair for myself?”

Crowley looked around: at the chair that fitted him like it was made for him, at the shelves crammed with weird books and tacky little momentos Crowley had gifted the angel over the years, at the doorway across the narrow hall where the edge of the angel’s bed was visible. It looked soft and perfect and like it had far too many cushions on it. 

“I’ve got the matching footstool somewhere. It didn’t really fit in here, but we can easily move things around a bit.”

“You...furniture…”

“Yes, darling,” said Aziraphale, leaning in and kissing him softly. “I bought furniture for you. There’s a picture of you in the hallway, I don’t know if you noticed. I would very much like it if you’d stay here whenever you’d like.”

“Would always be alright?”

Aziraphale laughed, eyes sparkling in the lamplight. 

Of course, my dear. I also purchased a very large bed,” he said, clearing his throat awkwardly. “I, um, know how much you like to sleep.”

“Sssleep, angel? You bought a bed for sleep?” Crowley chuckled, watching the blush colouring the apples of Aziraphale’s cheeks with a devilish grin on his face.

“Oh, do shut up.” 

Crowley had something clever he was going to say, but he didn’t get a chance to say it because Aziraphale was dragging him up out of the chair by his tie and pulling him in the direction of the bedroom. And good lord, the angel was strong, just like Crowley had always known he would be. Not that he was resisting with even a single atom of his being. 

They stumbled together, feet catching on the edge of an ancient persian rug as they made their way toward the bed, and then they were falling together into the vast softness of the angel’s bed in an ungainly pile of knees and elbows. Crowley pulled Aziraphale down on top of him, squirming deliciously between two dozen chintzy cushions and a generous expanse of eager angel. His hands snaked up under Aziraphale’s jumper before he could stop them, pressing against the fabric of his well-worn shirt. 

“S’this OK?” he asked into Aziraphale’s neck. 

The angel worked the jumper up over his head as an answer, and Crowley remembered too late that there would be those stupid, sexy braces holding his trousers up. 

“Elastic braces, elastic bloody braces.” he muttered. 

“I happen to like them.” 

“God, me too. Why do I like them?”

As Crowley rolled Aziraphale over and levered up one of the clasps with his teeth, he couldn’t even find it in himself to care when it pinged up and hit him sharply on the nose. 

Everything was perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then they moved to a much bigger cottage so that Crowley could have a garden and a very, very large television and lived happily ever after. 
> 
> (OK now I need to finish my Christmas fic in March! Hooray!)

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: Chinese fruit bats habitually engage in oral sex ;)


End file.
